• lemmyingly@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    Fakespot has always felt inaccurate to me. Once every 6 months or so I gave it a go to see if any of the updates have improved it but it never felt like it did to me.

    Furthermore, I don’t see the point in Fakespot since Amazon bends over backwards to accept returns for any reason.

    • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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      7 hours ago

      Your 2nd point doesn’t make any sense. Sure, you can spend the time returning things. If they’re bad and you know they’re bad. But what if they’re just bad enough?

      Take guitar pedals, for example. I know nothing about guitar pedals. I don’t know the brands, I don’t know the features I should look for, what they should cost, nothing. A company can purchase thousands, tens of thousands, or more fake reviews from a bot farm run by wage slaves. I might buy their subpar pedal based on the good review score. It’s fine, it works well enough from my initial testing and doesn’t die…

      But what I wanted was to purchase one of the better ones, which the false reviews told me it was! I could have spent the same or less for a better product, that rewarded the company that made the superior product. And I might not even know it, at least until it’s too late to return. That’s (one of) the problems with how bad fake reviews have gotten.

    • CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      Furthermore, I don’t see the point in Fakespot since Amazon bends over backwards to accept returns for any reason.

      Why go through that hassle if you can avoid it in the first place?

      • RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works
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        16 hours ago

        Because I’m buying the $8 option from a company called “XYBENOZ”. Without reading the reviews I already know there’s a 56% chance of failure, but I’m willing to take that risk because then it’s Amazon’s problem.

    • spector@lemmy.ca
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      23 hours ago

      I stopped trusting it much when I noticed there’s a huge difference between the same product on amazon.ca and amazon.com. On one domain it can give something an F grade while on the other domain it will have an A grade.

      It’s a nice idea but when you think it about it’s actually kind of hard to determine the quality of a particular listing apart from the obvious checks you can do yourself. Like if the seller is some random drop shipper or actually Amazon or the manufacturer.

      Judging reviews with whatever AI system they use is not very accurate anyways. Once again the obvious fake reviews can sometimes stand out. But the better ones a machine can’t tell any more than you can.

    • cascadia99@lemm.ee
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      24 hours ago

      I’ve also wondered about Fakespot’s accuracy. I just viewed it as one tool when doing online shopping. I’d prefer not to order crap in the first place than try to return something later.